


Handcuffs in a Hotel Room

by BloodMooninSpace



Series: Berserker'verse [3]
Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: Alternate Universe - Daemons, Alternate Universe - Sentinels & Guides, Attempted Kidnapping, Gen, Guide Powers, Handcuffs, Sentinel Senses, Unknown abilities
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-27
Updated: 2017-02-27
Packaged: 2018-09-27 05:52:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,938
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9979256
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BloodMooninSpace/pseuds/BloodMooninSpace
Summary: In the wake of Vala's kidnapping, Cameron Mitchell and SG-1 tried to rescue her, but the rescue has gone sideways.





	

**Author's Note:**

> A big Thank You to Ara and Bubbles for the editing help!
> 
> And a second thank you to my readers for your patience, I had a car accident this week and it has been interfering with my planned writing and editing schedule.

Cameron Mitchell lay on the bed, his shoulder afire. He allowed himself a brief moment of thanks for the prank wars of his childhood, and the resulting ability to wake without moving. There was someone pacing the room he was in, and aside from the pain in his left arm, his right was out of commission too.

“I know you’re awake. Your heart rate is spiking. Your breathing is shallower and less even.” She tilted her head as she looked at him. “What are you doing?”

Cam cracked open his eyes and peered around the room. He was in a dingy motel room with Vala, and she was prowling the room. After a moment, she froze and looked at him. She had been studying the room, and now she was studying him, with a piercing gaze that was quite unusual on her usually cheerful face. When the heating unit by the wall kicked on, she flinched, and wrinkled her nose, as though it drew air from somewhere that reeked.

“Checking to see if I have both of my kidneys.” Yeah, the joke was getting a little old and stale, but the first time he’s made it they were off-world, and Vala didn’t get it, and by the time Daniel had finished explaining the black market for organs on earth, Vala thought it tremendously funny, and had been repeating it every time she woke up in a strange place, or the infirmary. But Vala didn’t laugh. She didn’t even give him the indulgent smile that she usually gave when he made a joke that clearly wasn’t funny to an alien who can recognise that it’s supposed to be funny, but can’t figure out the joke.

“Vala, what the hell’s goin’ on here?” His insides were turning to ice as he saw a spark of curiosity in her eyes, the same look he’d seen a dozen times when she was looking at the security systems for treasure of some form or another.

“You know me?” Her voice was measured and calm. Dead serious. Cam tried valiantly to fight the sinking feeling in his gut as she sat down in the chair, Jewel on her shoulder, the daemon’s current coloring a mottling of sickly green, muted grey, and brown. Three colors he’d never seen on the creature before. There was a scraping of something along the edge of his mind, and Cam knew he was missing something vital here.

“Yeah, of course. Why?” As she took a strip of a ragged white bandage from Jewel’s grasp, it clicked. “You don’t remember me.”  The words were ashen on his lips, and he felt at once both sad, and very afraid. But he wasn’t afraid of her. He felt afraid of the world and of himself. The fear was muted though, and it felt foreign and not entirely like it was his own feeling.

“I don't remember much of anything. Least of all who I am, or why everyone is after me. That's why I brought you here, Shaman. You're going to supply me with some much-needed answers.”

Cameron ignored her as she dressed his arm, the implications of what she had said racing through his head. “Shamans” were what Vala had called Empaths when she had first been on earth. She had said that on her homeworld, Berserkers had been called Guardians, and Empaths had been called Shamans--before Qetesh had conquered them.

“Where’s Kaxiss? Vala, where’s Kaxiss?” Cameron asked with the cold grip of his own fear gnawing at his belly. She might not have hauled his Daemon away and locked her in the bathroom while they were both out cold.

“Is this her first journey afar? Have you really never used your gifts before? I remember almost nothing of my life before the last fortnight, and yet that I remember. I remember it like I remember how to breathe; how could you not?”

The knots on his bandage must have been good enough for her satisfaction, because Vala stood, and threw herself onto the bed. More accurately, she sat _on_ him, and he could feel a disorienting sense of _not-right wrong_ arousal burning low and constant.

“Aaah. You know, maybe we should call the rest of the team; they're generally better at answers.” Cameron was looking up at her, watching, hoping to see any flicker of memory or trust. “Okay, here goes. Your name is Vala Mal Doran. You're a member of Stargate Command, a top secret facility located beneath Cheyenne Mountain. It's the command center for a military organization responsible for offworld exploration and reconnaissance by means of a device known as a Stargate, a portal which allows near-instantaneous transport between planets.”

Cameron felt his heart pound as Vala twined her fingers in the chain of his tags and lifted them up. She read them, and let them drop. He felt certain that she was skeptical that he was sane, not that he was lying, and that’s a victory. A small and potentially futile victory, yes, but a victory. He almost questioned how he knew, but the knowledge felt unquestionably true.

“How'm I doin’ so far?” Cam asked, because he needed more time to figure out the duality of what he was feeling. It was clear enough that the arousal felt weird, warm and pooling; sensuous and lax. But that’s wrong, because that’s not how it feels, normally. Both feelings of fear were abating, and he had this steady assurance that even though her back was to the door, and he didn’t have a weapon in reach, nobody was coming, and he’s perfectly safe.

“Not good.” Vala answered his question, and he felt another wave of skepticism, tinged with the feeling of the fantastical, like the words he was using to explain the program rang of faeries and dragons, not of the greater galaxy of the here and now.

“I know it sounds crazy, but it's the truth.” Cam tried to push his certainty outward. It just felt like the right way to convince her. Vala was smiling with her ‘I’m bartering with idiots, but these idiots think they are bright, so I’ll play along’ smile when she answered.

“Hm. Okay. So, we're space explorers?” She snorted derisively. “What kind of space explorer does not know how to bring his Soulbeast back from wandering Afar?”

“Well, technically, me and my team are the explorers. You're just… along for the ride, because… Well, you're not originally from this planet; you're an alien. And Wandering Afar? How am I supposed to be able to do something I’ve never had to do before? Never in my memory has Kaxiss been too far away from me. That sneaky girl even figured out how to fold into the footwell of a fighter jet when she was afraid that I’d not get to fly because she had settled into an animal so big.”

Fighter jets might not be something Vala knew anything about here on Earth, but damn, he needed her to believe him, or remember, or at least give him his pants back. Vala is still sitting on him, over him, and she didn’t look like she believed him in the slightest.

“I mean that in the nicest possible way! Y'know, when you say 'alien', people think green skin, four eyes, tentacles, what have you, but the— the reality is very, very different.”

Vala nodded, as if she was trying to reassure him, and Cam knew those eyes all too well. Those were her ‘I’m innocent and guileless and you couldn’t possibly think I mean you any harm’ eyes. Those eyes meant trouble, aside from how troubling it was that so many of Vala’s patented mannerisms apparently ran deep enough in her psyche that she used them even when she could not remember who she was. “Mm-hm.” The noise was clearly meant to be reassuring.  Cam found it anything but.

“Look, take you, for example. You're human. Hell, you're more human than most of my neighbors, especially that guy in 304.”

Vala rocked forward, pressing her forehead into his, and Cameron quieted for a moment, and then continued softly. “Look, since you're part of the team maybe you should think about—”

“It won't be long.”

“—trusting me?” Cam paused, his eyes falling shut at her closeness. “What won’t be long”

“Until you are able to find her. She’s already been Afar for hours. You know her well, so just let your mind drift, search her out, and show her the way home.”

Her breath was warm against his lips and chin, her weight a solid wall of warmth above him. Her elbows were resting on his shoulders, but they weren’t digging in, and he could feel the carefully precise lines of tension as she held herself over him. It couldn’t hurt to try it her way.

Kaxiss. Her warm blue-grey eyes. Her coat, tan and even in most places, but picked out with accenting links of a brown so dark it is almost black. The kiss of white on her muzzle, the starburst on her chest that she loved having scratched. Her tenacity. Her unwillingness to let her size keep him from flying missions. Her belief that they would walk again. Her steady belief that being among the Sodan wouldn’t be his dying breath. How she had somehow managed to disappear and make faking his death real enough that Hycon believed him dead. This wasn’t the first time she had gone away, but this time was different. More complete. Something else had changed as well.

There was a shift in weight on the bed, and a sudden dip as a weight slammed into Vala and wrenched her off of him, over his right side, and onto the bed under close to a hundred pounds of Florida panther.

“Easy girl.” Vala said cajolingly. There was a flirty under edge to it that soothed something in Cam, because this was a flash of the Vala he knew so well. “Why don’t I go grab us something to eat, and leave you two alone for a bit. I won’t be long.”

Kaxiss reluctantly moved off of Vala, choosing instead to flop across Cam’s chest. Cam didn’t try to stop her as Vala rummaged through his wallet and lifted a bit of his cash. He lifted his hand and buried it in Kaxiss’s fur before Vala even sat up, and didn’t let go until well after she had left.

“I thought I’d lost you.” Cam heard his voice crack a little, and was very glad that fact would stay between himself and his daemon.

“Don’t be silly, you’ve known we had this potential for years, otherwise I would never have known about it. I used it briefly when we had to play dead, although you weren’t yet awakened to your abilities, so I was only able to cross the barrier for a few minutes. I’m glad it was enough.”

Cam let that just soak in a minute, because how could he even begin to respond? When Berserkers came online, they always lost their Daemons, and he was afraid that he was going to go berserk if she ever left him? That he had never considered that he could be an Empath, let alone one of the caliber it took to send their Daemon to far-speak with others?

  
“We’ll be fine, Cameron. And if you aren’t ready to share this with anyone, well, I’m here again, and as long as nobody ever sees you without me, we will be able to keep this a secret.” She lifted her head and swiped her tongue across the underside of Cam’s jaw.


End file.
